


Untitled Crossover - Silent Hill/Supernatural

by duffmansean



Category: Silent Hill, Supernatural
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Gore, Graphic Violence, Hurt Sam, Minor Character Death, Post-Hell Dean, Post-Hell Sam, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, for the time being anyway.... i just haven't felt creative enough nor had time enough to finish it, gratuitous quoting of Johnny Cash, i mean a looooot, kind of?, lots of gore, mentions of previous Sam/Jess, post season 6 divergence, post swan song alternate universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-08 00:42:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1126347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duffmansean/pseuds/duffmansean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean in Silent Hill... yup.  that's about it.</p><p>Three full chapters, and a handful of random tid-bits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started this waaaay back right after S6 ended. I'd wanted something like this to read, but couldn't find much. So I took it upon myself to write it.... unfortunately, I couldn't really plan out what I was going to do with it, or how I wanted the story to progress. Which sucks because I really love how gross and twisted the SH universe is; it's a lot of fun to write about.
> 
> Suffice to say, it's abandoned for the time being. Forgive the grammar/spelling mistakes.
> 
> I'm putting it up here for archiving's sake, as I'm sure LJ will delete it one of these days.

**CHAPTER ONE**

 

It was late.  They had been driving all day – not because they needed to be there yesterday, but just for the sheer want of _movement_. 

 

Things were difficult now.   Castiel ( _God_ ) was out of their lives, having too much to deal with in Heaven now that he was Lord.  Dean was still reeling from the betrayal.  Sam was still suffering blowback from new memories.  Things were just… difficult.  Tiring.  Daunting, even.   Then again, when were they ever not?

 

Movement kept them sane, grounded.  It was what they had been doing all their lives.  They were always running somewhere… the question was whether they were running _to_ or _from_. 

 

Sam always figured it was the latter. 

 

He was behind the wheel of the Impala, drumming his fingers softly against the frame, and heading toward their newest hunt.   Dean was dozing next to him, not really asleep but not quite awake, either.  Sam knew the sound of Dean’s sleeping, no matter how long he had been gone.

 

And he had been gone for a long time.  _Centuries_ , he reminded himself, _centuries of memories are all yours now.  Do you remember? The blood, the pain, the torment, the sickening squelch of fluids as they rend the meat from your inner—_

 

“Enough,” he whispered to himself, conscious of his brother possibly hearing him.  A few more hushed admonishments to himself and Sam focused back on the road running beneath the car. 

 

It was late, well past midnight.  Sam might normally have been sleeping, might have told Dean to pull over so they could just sleep it off in the car, but Sam didn’t sleep so much these days.  Even if he managed to fall asleep, the nightmares woke him mere minutes later.  So why bother even trying, if it was all for naught anyway?  He had gotten into the habit of keeping himself awake for as long as he could stand – exhaustion seemed to dampen the nightmares.

 

Dean stirred in his seat across the bench, softly smacking his lips before settling back against the window.  The glass pulled at his cheek, making his whole expression skew.  It had Sam grinning despite himself. 

 

Green flashed in Sam’s peripheral vision and, eyes darting back to the road, he saw a highway sign illuminated in the Impala’s headlights: **Brahms 18, Silent Hill 5** , with indicative arrows of which direction.  The road apparently split… which was odd, Sam thought, considering that branching to the _left_ , as indicated by the sign, meant he would be driving across the wooded median and into the other side of the highway. 

 

Shrugging it off, he took the fork leading to the abandoned town.

 

They had first heard of the place from some diner waitress.  She and the cook had been talking about that poor soul; he lost his kid up in Silent Hill and hadn’t been seen since.  Some claimed he’d gone looking for her and just lost his mind trying to find her. 

 

Ever curious, they had inquired about the place and the waitress was more than happy to gab all about the spooky ghost town.  Apparently abandoned in in the early ‘60s, the town had once been a thriving tourist trap thanks to a large amusement park and boating adventures on Lake Toluca.  It was supposedly a beautiful place all those yeahrs and yeahrs ago, but had since become a ghost town.  There were rumors as to why: lack of jobs, the tourist industry couldn’t flourish anymore, famine or disease. 

 

Leaning against the table, the waitress had pursed her lips and quirked an eyebrow at each brother and asked if they wanted to know the really _weird_ stories.  Naturally, they did.  She told them that there were rumors of the town being cursed.  There was talk that the place had been built over an Indian burial ground, and that the old settlers were finally getting their comeuppance; whispers of lake monsters killing off the tourist industry; talk that the old prison was haunted and had driven away any prosperity; mention of occult worshiping, underground sects of dogmatic folk who were into human sacrifices and all that devil worship.  Why, some even said the very town itself was evil.

 

With a knowing wink, she left them to their breakfast.

 

“Hear that?” Sam had whispered conspiratorially across the Formica, “The _town_ is evil.”

 

“Yeah, I heard,” Dean grumbled around a mouthful of eggs, “Pro’lly just haunted.”

 

Sam frowned, picking at his own food.  “I don’t know, Dean.  If it were haunted, she would have just said so.  People don’t tend to say a town is evil.  They’ll just say it’s haunted.”

 

Dean was silent for a while, thinking it over, and Sam was content to let it rest.  There were a lot less words between them these days, but neither really minded. 

 

Ten hours later -- six of which were spent researching the town’s history -- the Winchester boys had packed up the Impala and headed out toward where the town was supposedly located.  No one could give them a precise spot; just said to head in one direction that way.

 

Reaching across the Impala, Sam gave Dean’s shoulder a little shove.  “Hey, wake up.”

 

Dean grumbled, loathe to leave his half-dream.  Sam smiled again.

 

Above the steady rumble of the Impala’s engine, there were heavy breaths and the crinkle of leather upholstery as Dean fidgeted into wakefulness.  Groaning softly, Dean stretched his limbs as much as the cramped quarters would allow.

 

“We there yet?” He asked, voice rough with sleep.

 

Sam nodded.  “Almost.”

 

They were silent for a while, pavement stretching out beneath the dull hue of the headlights.  It looked foggy outside, wisps of it caressing the edges of the road, ghosting over the sides of the car.  Pine trees crowded around them – not in straight lines, either, like they saw in southern areas where pine tree farms were common.  No, this was dense, natural wood.

 

“Do we actually know what we’re doing?” Dean asked.

 

Sam frowned, fingers drumming anxiously against the steering wheel.  Shrugging, he said, “I don’t know.  How exactly do we go about finding, or even killing, the evil part of a town?”

 

“Million dollar question, Sammy.”

 

They lapsed into silence again, broken only by Dean’s long yawns and the quiet beat of Sam’s thumb on the wheel.

 

Turning around a bend in the road, Sam started to accelerate again but then the beams of the headlights caught a pale figure in the road, too close for Sam to stop.  He shouted in surprise, and Dean yanked his gaze from the passenger window to look forward.

 

As the girl – it was a girl after all, wearing a sheer night dress – turned to face them, the light bounced glaringly off the white of her dress and the deep crimson smear across the front of it.  Her hair hung in limp, golden waves, and her eyes looked so sad as she reached a beckoning hand out to them.

 

Sam had only a moment to gasp, _Jess_ , before he slammed on the breaks, jerking the wheel in an effort to swerve around her.  The tires squealed and he was vaguely aware of his brother shouting at him, asking what the hell.  He pulled too far on the wheel though, the tires skidding along the pavement shrilly.  He twisted, yanking the wheel back to try and correct, but he couldn’t get the car to stop fishtailing.

 

Sam could only think of Jessica; _oh God, don’t let me have hit her, please don’t let me have hit her_.

 

There was a bump as the Impala hit the dip of the shoulder, then a shrieking grind of metal as the car came to a halt against the guard rail.  Dean yelped, head flung harshly into the passenger’s window from inertia, and Sam thought to ask if he was okay but then—

 

Whiplash threw his face against the steering wheel, and then Sam didn’t think at all.

 

__________

 

When Dean came to, it was snowing.

 

Which made no sense: it was mid-October and couldn’t be less than 75-degrees outside.  So, what the hell?

 

His head hurt horribly, and he groaned as he sat up, pressing his hand to his temple.  He could feel the tackiness that meant he had been bleeding – the window he had fallen into was spider-webbed, a deep impact in the center that spiraled out into a mesh of cracks, all traced in red.

 

Sighing, Dean turned to tell Sam he was going to kill him, what the fuck was he thinking, hurting his baby like this—

 

Sam was gone.

 

“Sam?” Dean paused, looking out through the windshield but it was damn impossible to see more than five feet in this fog.  He had to scoot across the benchseat since his door was jammed up against the guardrail.  Crawling out of the car, he stretched his aching body as much as he could stand, feeling all the knotted muscles and awkward joints that needed to pop.   “Sam!” he tried again, “…Sam!”

 

 It was dead silent outside the car.  There was a deep hush that seemed to blanket everything, keeping his voice from traveling further than his eyes could see.  Everything was coated in a thick layer of snow and fog.  He still couldn’t figure out the snow – it was not cold enough for it. 

 

Panic started to bubble up in his chest and he did his best to stamp it down.  No use in getting worried, Sam was a grown man and could handle himself.  He’d proven that quite a bit in the last year and a half.   Dean still tried calling his cell phone – which didn’t seem to be working.  His phone was lifeless: no dial tone, no signal, nothing. 

 

Dean cursed under his breath and stuffed the useless thing back in his pocket.  He made sure he still had his colt on him, a flask of holy water and some salt – the essentials – because he was going to have to go looking for his brother.

 

The snow fell in hushed whispers around him, but he noticed now, out in the open, a dusty, thicker scent hanging in the air.  It wasn’t the crisp clean of snow.  Little flakes drifted down onto his jacket and face, onto the hand he held out.  Rubbing his fingers together, the flakes smudged dirty gray across his skin.

 

“Ash…”   It was ash from a fire.  From the coal fire?  That had been decades ago, if it had even ever happened.

 

That explained why his lungs kept wanting to choke off his air supply.  God only knew how long he’d been breathing in this mess.  Dean vaguely wondered if the fog was just smoke from the fire, and not actual cloud cover.  He wiped his hands off on his jeans (not that it helped clean them) and turned to inspect the Impala.

 

He was afraid to look at his girl at first, wondering what kind of damage Sam had managed to inflict on her; stupid little bitch was gonna get it bad when Dean found him.   Luckily, she seemed to be mostly intact.  Save for some serious gouges from the guard rail and the busted passenger window, she was okay.  Hell, she’d probably drive just fine.

 

As he turned away from the tires that he was double-checking, Dean noticed footprints in the ash that weren’t his own.  Standing up, he realized they were Sam’s, coming from the car and heading away toward the town, not backtracking for help. 

 

“Stupid fucking…” Dean grumbled, but he hurried along in an effort to catch up with his brother before the ash covered up the footprints. 

 

_____

 

Panting harshly, Sam had to stop and braced himself against his own knees.  His lungs burned and he had a matching pair of stitches for either side, but he had still pushed himself to keep going.  He’d run all the way into Silent Hill, past the Welcome Center and the police station, past anything that might have offered the Winchester brothers some kind of help. 

 

He had to find Jess.

 

She had been there when he woke up, a distant shape hiding in the smoky haze of the town, but he knew it was her.  He had stumbled out of the not-really-wreckage of the Impala, hesitated long enough to figure Dean would still be out cold by the time Sam got back, and dashed after her.

 

Now, Sam could run.  Their lifestyle demanded he be able to sprint for longer distances than a human’s muscular system should allow.  They had no choice, really, when they were running for their lives from monsters (or the police).  Jess was fast, though -- inhumanly so.

 

Gulping air, Sam swallowed down his nausea and took a look at his surroundings.  Jess had run down this street but now he saw no sign of her.  She must have gone down one of the side streets or alleyways that hid between the houses.  He was in a residential area; small shoebox homes nestled in so close to each other that a neighbor could reach out their kitchen window and touch the other’s paneling.

 

It was quaint, really, if one could get past the thick layer of ash that turned everything a pale, sickened gray color.  It made each little home into a macabre dollhouse.  Sam half-expected a mannequin to pop out of one of the front doors, dressed up in moth-eaten clothes and missing its eyes or hands.  Maybe it wasn’t quite so quaint anymore.

 

Taking a deep, deep breath and coughing it out – this damned _ash_ \-- Sam straightened up and started walking down the road. 

 

“Jess?” He called, cupping his hands around his mouth in an effort to make his voice carry, “Jess!” 

 

A swish behind him, barely audible, was followed by quick, soft footsteps.  He sprinted down the street, eyes darting back and forth, desperate for any sign of her – a flutter of her night gown, a flash of straw-colored hair, even a bloody footprint would suffice.  Out of the fog he got his wish; he could just make out the outline of her body as she ducked into an alleyway, hair shining in the gray of the town.

 

“Stop!  Come on, it’s me!” Sam kept going, though, determined to catch up to her.  “Jess! Stop!” 

 

By the time he got to the alleyway, she was gone again save the crash of a metal gate that came from the end of the alley.  It was creepy, walking down that thin stretch of pavement behind the houses.  He could see (more like smell) trash-cans still piled with bags of ripe, spoiled refuse.  There was a child’s bike leaned up against one of the garage doors.  At the end of the alleyway he found a basketball hoop and accompanying ball, though they were a sinister sight to behold, drenched in blood and thick chunks of tissue.  The net itself wasn’t white anywhere that Sam could see, already stained a deep burnt umber from the dried fluids.  The puddle around the basketball was mostly dry and absorbed into the pavement, but the edges beneath the ball were still moist. 

 

Sam wondered vaguely how something could seem so fresh in a town that was supposed to have been abandoned decades ago. 

 

Another whisper of movement behind him had Sam turning around and looking toward a chain-link gate hidden in the corner of the alley.  It must have led into another alleyway or maybe someone’s back yard. 

 

Blood was swathed over the lock mechanism and the top, as if someone had opened it with gruesome hands.

 

Sam made his way back there, certain this was where Jess had gone.  Once beyond the gate, Sam found himself sandwiched between a high concrete wall and the paneling of the house.  However, once the house ended, there was another tall slab of concrete.  As Sam made his cautious way down the paved steps and to the left (his only option, as the walls dictated that he turn), he was convinced something was really, really off about this place.  He could distinctly recall being in a residential area, nothing but white picket fences and cookie-cutter double-wides.  There were no skyscrapers in Silent Hill.  Looking up, Sam couldn’t see more than a sliver of the dull sky between the top edges of the walls. 

 

The ash hardly carried down here, but there was so little room for light that Sam was forced to pull out a LED pocket-flashlight as he kept going, each thick slab of sidewalk dipping down every few feet.  His sense of navigation was skewed now, what with all the zigzagging turns and the confusion of how in the hell he had missed seeing these buildings.

 

A wail started up, loud but distant – not human, but machine.  Sam started, glancing upward even though he knew he would find only a bleak, dark expanse.  It was a siren, Sam was sure, like the kind they used for bomb threats.  It rose in a shrill crescendo, held its note and then faded away, only to repeat itself. 

 

_The hell…?_

 

Rounding a corner, Sam found himself in a square opening that seemed to be where the buildings ended.  Everything was getting darker, though, and Sam’s flashlight barely helped at all.

 

“Jess!” He called once more, thinking it was probably best he turn around and go back.  It wasn’t like he could get lost, there was only one walkway.  “Where…? Jess!” 

 

Looking around, Sam wondered if he had found his way to a park of some sort.  The beam of his flashlight drifted across high chain-link fences, pieces divided by thick poles like the kind he would find at primary schools. 

 

It was wet here.  The ground gave sick squelching and splatting noises as his feet slapped down against the concrete.  He kept going, curious to see if maybe Jessica had wandered into the park.

 

“Jess!” Sam tried again, anxious to get back into open air.  Claustrophobia was starting to set in, even though he was really in an open area – it was just a maze of fences, all see-through – but barely anything was visible.  The darkness was so thick that his flashlight could hardly hold a beam more than a few feet in front of him. 

 

“Fuck, come on, Jess…” Sam begged under his breath.  “Jessica!”

 

He felt nervous, away from Dean for so long.  He must have woken up by now, probably worried sick at not knowing where his little brother was.  Sam wondered if Dean ever felt that way when he had been in the pit, just waking up sometimes to wonder where his little brother was before he remembered.  Sam felt guilty for thinking such things, _wishing_ even that Dean had suffered like that; what kind of selfish fuck would wish something like that on their brother? Practically soul-mates, their destinies so intertwined in one another, giving everything they had for each other, and Sam was hoping Dean had been hurting after he had disappeared.  What a sick fuck he was.

 

A rustle, the sound of shuffling footsteps, from out in front of him had Sam jerking his flashlight in that direction, calling out to whoever was there.  He raced forward, dodging this way and that as he moved through the maze of chain link.  He followed no set path; only what his ears gave him, the gasping of breath and the slap of bare feet on the concrete.

 

Then, as suddenly as it had come, the noises disappeared.  Sam came up short, turning about in an effort to find out where the person had stopped.  His flashlight offered him no clues. 

 

He could still hear the siren, distantly; it seemed to be fading, whatever threat that had surfaced must be gone.  Sam was left with only the hushed drips of liquid against concrete and his own anxious breaths.

 

It was then that he really looked around himself, letting the beam of light linger on the fences, the floor, the puddles.  It was different than he remembered seeing it when he first entered.  The concrete was worn, weathered and cracked, with deep grooves of blackened filth that appeared gummy to the touch.   The chain link was rusted so horribly in some places that wires had broken in half, deep brick color at their curling ends.  Whatever childhood playground this may have been, it certainly wasn’t anymore.

 

He halted, having tried continuing through the maze, when the beam of his flashlight fell on a figure up against the fence a few feet away.  It was too dark to make out, but Sam distinctly saw its shape. 

 

“Hello?”

 

He got no response.   In fact, the person didn’t even turn to look in his direction. 

 

Sam frowned.  He should really turn around, go back the way he came – if he were honest with himself, however, he really didn’t remember which way that was; had been chasing  Jess in such a blind panic that he couldn’t remember which forks in the fenced path he had taken.

 

Taking a few more steps closer, Sam could make out the way the person was leaning… no, they were pinned; the unnatural straightness of the spine, and now Sam could see the way their limbs had been pulled out to their sides, up against the fence.  This person was pinned against the fence.

 

“Hey!” He started running, grumbled when he hit dead ends against the fence, turning to find a way around them that led him over to the shadowed shape.  He tried calling a few more times, but the person was unresponsive.  Sam ignored the cold feeling sneaking up his spine.

 

Sam had to backtrack nearly twenty feet to get around one length of fence.  Turning the corner, Sam almost missed the mass that had collected at the bottom of the fence where it met the wall.  Slowing, head turning in a double-take, Sam frowned in curiosity.  The beam of his flashlight illuminated the ruddy mess and Sam fought back the need to vomit.

 

Heaped into the corner was a mass of flesh and bone and sinew and all other manner of entrails.  Blood pooled thick and dark around it all, saturating the concrete so thoroughly that it actually turned it red all the way out to beneath Sam’s feet.  Realizing what he was standing on, Sam was spurred into action again.

 

He turned and ran the next ten feet needed to round another end of fencing, disgusted to find more pieces of flesh strung up on the broken ends of the chain link.  There were whole sheets of skin flung over the top rung of the fence, as if it was nothing more than a damp towel needing to dry. 

 

The air was so much thicker now, damp and heavy, and it clung to him like a desperate lover.  His shirts hugged his frame, his hair was stuck against the damp skin of his neck and face, his lungs begged the question of why; why was it so much harder to breathe?  Sam was getting anxious, adrenaline making his heart beat faster than it should be and his lungs ask for more air than he needed. 

 

He needed to calm down – but it was so damn difficult when there was someone who needed help in a place that shouldn’t exist according to his mind’s map and there was gore all around them.  How the hell should Sam feel other than _anxious_?  Any sane person would be screaming.

 

That’s when he saw it.  The person… or what he had thought was a person. 

 

He had to get up close to it in order for his flashlight to really illuminate what it was, but Sam knew even before the dark fog had cleared.  He knew the scent; this was a corpse.  Strung up like it was a Christmas window display, the skeletal figure was tied to the fencing with barbed wire, its clothes hung off it in rags that were molding from the damp, what little skin it had was brittle with decay.  The bones that he could see – its ribs and forearms mostly – were still covered in a thick reddish crust, the blackened remnants of old blood.  As if the body weren’t a ghastly enough image, the _stench…_ It was too fresh a scent for the bones Sam could see; the sheer force of it this close was nearly unbearable. 

 

Sam was familiar with death.  Death was putrid, like a rotten film that coated the back of your tongue for days after you had burned a body.  This was nothing like that.  This was thicker, harsher, _meatier_.  Even as Sam stumbled backwards away from it, he could feel the bilious rancor sinking into the flesh of his olfactory.

 

In his blind panic – if a Winchester were indeed capable of panic – Sam didn’t turn around in time to avoid running into the creature behind him.  He yelped loudly, eyes opening impossibly wide at the kneeling mass before him. 

 

It moaned at the contact, hunching over even further and nearly prostrating itself before him.  Its back… its back was hideous.  There were lash marks, deep and angry looking, covering the curvature of its spine – obviously made with something thicker than leather.  The edges of the wounds oozed pus from infection and the mess slowly dripped down its pale back in thick, viscous trails.  Perhaps the stench hadn’t been entirely from the corpse.

 

Sam started to turn the other way, eyes wary to leave this new _thing_ , but his movement was halted when he came to face another, and yet another, and yet another.  There were at least a dozen of them now. 

 

Staring around him, he had just a few moments to study the way the skin of the creature’s front was stretched taught over two long bones in an upside-down V.  Its elbows, or what Sam could only think to call elbows, were ragged and ripped, bloody-raw and pitted with dirt and pebbles.   Gaze wandering lower, Sam could see the things knees, almost hidden by the stained brown robe around its middle, looked just as bad off. 

 

Circling, back against the chain link fence, Sam started to move away from the corpse and away from the creatures kneeling before him.  They were slow in their movements toward him, knees shuffling along the ground, but when Sam started to run, they started screaming.  It was a low, murderous sound; horrifically painful, the sort that tugs at your gut as it crawls up your spine.  Multiplied a dozen times, it was damn near deafening. 

 

Glancing behind him, Sam swore loudly.  The creatures had no faces, save for a mouth, and it was something rather reminiscent of a Van Gogh painting, stretched out long and mournful.  The pale skin of their heads was a sickly, greenish color, slick with a sheen of sweat.  There were no eyes, no nose; just the vague bump and divot of where those things might have been.

 

Finally, they stopped screaming, mouths sealing up in a barely visible line.  Sam’s chest heaved with every gasp he pulled, and his pulse pounded loudly in his ears. 

 

One by one the creatures lowered themselves even further toward the floor.  Their elbows pressed down into the concrete, crunching and grinding against the hard pavement.  Their faces turned in Sam’s direction and then they started crawling after him. 

 

“Damn it,” Sam growled, turning and dashing down the nearest corridor of fencing.  There were more of the insane creatures, though, dozens upon dozens, all starting to cry and moan in that haunting way of theirs.  He thought to pull his gun, but to what avail when there were so many?  He had to find his way out, get back to his brother, and then get them the hell out of Dodge.

 

His feet skidded beneath him, back-pedaling hard, as he turned a corner and realized too late that the monsters weren’t on the side of the fence he had thought.  They crowed around him, pushing into him, clawing – they had hands after all, tucked up under their chins in fucking _prayer_ – clawing at his shins as he turned to run the opposite direction. 

 

It was getting harder to navigate.  Each corridor seemed swamped, the creatures shuffling awkwardly across the ground, moaning dreadfully in a discordant chorus. 

 

To his left, Sam could just make out a doorway at the end of one corridor, barely visible in the darkness but a beacon nonetheless.  He made a mad dash for it, pulling his gun as he went.  There were only six or seven monsters in his way, and he put a bullet into each one’s head, stepping on top of their corpses like macabre stepping stones. 

 

Inside the building, he turned to slam the door shut –

 

“ _Fuck_!”

 

\-- but there was no door.  The hinges were rusted where they hung limply, barely attached by a single screw. 

 

“No, no, no,” he gasped, twisting in an effort to find something.  He grabbed at chairs, tables, a fire extinguisher, anything and everything he could get his hands on and hurl out the doorway at the villainous beasts.  They surged forward, piling into the frame. 

 

Sam, jaw set, pulled the trigger as many times as he could before they crashed into him, dragging him to the floor.  He cried out as they fell silent, no longer moaning but just tearing into him.  He pulled his arm up, protecting his face, and felt his sleeve snag on their claws.  His other hand reached to his belt – he yelped again as a claw sliced into his thumb – and grabbed his knife.

 

With another valiant holler, Sam twisted and wrenched the knife deep into the side of one creature.  He didn’t wait for it to fall limp before he turned the knife into another, and another.  The attacks left him vulnerable though, claws digging into his chest and the soft flesh near his neck, and it wasn’t long before the knife was smacked from his weakening grasp. 

 

Over the sounds of ripping fabric and the anguished shouts he knew to be his own, Sam could hear the wail of the siren as he had before. 

 

 _Jess_? He thought dimly before consciousness left him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If chapter one gave you serious squick, you may want to avoid the rest.... or at least make sure you read on an empty stomach.

**CHAPTER TWO**

 

“Sam!”

 

Dean was starting to panic.  He had followed Sam’s footprints down Nathan Avenue into town but now that he was there, the ash had finally caught up with him – Sam’s footprints were lost.  

 

“Damn it,” he cursed to himself, catching his breath.  His brother couldn’t have gone all that far.  Dean had already passed the worn welcome sign and the small number of isolated houses before turning down Bauchman Road and entering the main part of town.  

 

Righting himself, he made his way down past a dozen cookie-cutter houses, all with a nice square patch of grass out front and mailboxes in coordinating colors.  It made Dean cringe, how incredibly Stepford the place looked.  The homes gave way to shops as he crossed an intersection; all nameless and nondescript, perhaps general stores or bookshops, cafes or hardware suppliers.  Who knew?  The doors were all locked up and the windows were newspapered.  And everything, of course, was covered in a thin layer of gray.

 

Out of the fog, Dean saw a larger building on the corner of the next intersection.  He realized it was a police station as he drew up closer, noticing the faded blue paint and the decrepit lettering along the roof. 

 

“Oh, please don’t be locked,” he muttered to himself as he tried the door.  Surprise, surprise; it opened for him.

 

Inside the air was musty and stale, really no better than the thick soot of outside.  It was a rather plain-looking office: long counter top, bracketed by a glass partition, chairs pushed up against the wall, a handful of doors leading elsewhere. 

 

Dean hopped up onto the counter top and swung his legs over, kicking a chair out of his way as he stepped down.  There were papers strewn all across the surface but very little that looked useful.  He pulled at draws and filing cabinets, hoping to find a map or something similar.  No such luck, but he did find a radio.  He twisted the dial at the top of it, letting it crackle into life, but every channel was dead.  Nothing but soft white noise filtered through its speakers.

 

He held onto it anyway. 

 

He checked the two doors back behind the counter, but the locks were jammed.  Hopping over the countertop, Dean checked the other doors leading out of the office but they were all locked up tight or swollen with so much rot that there was no budging them open.  All except for the women’s restroom, which he thought a bit odd; the door swung open easily when he turned the handle, as if there wasn’t mold and mildew growing in every corner of the building.

 

Aside from the rank of old age, it was a rather plain restroom: three sinks, three stalls, three of those ridiculously useless hand dryers.  Since he was here, Dean figured he might as well put one of those stalls to use – they had been on the road for a while, after all.  He clipped the large radio to his belt loop and pushed one of the stall doors; it was locked. 

 

 _How surprising_ , Dean grumbled to himself.

 

He tried the next; still locked.  The last one, however, opened with a loud squeal of the hinges.  There was hardly any light at all back here, only a little sliver shining through a high, rectangular window.  It was just enough to show that the floor beneath his feet was blackened with mold and the water in the bowl was a sickly brown color; yet just little enough to leave some to the imagination.  Dean suppressed his gag reflex as he unzipped his pants. 

 

Just as he was finishing, he heard a noise start up outside.  “What…?” He hissed, tucking himself in and glancing up at the window as if it could give him some answer.  After a few seconds, Dean realized it was an air raid siren.  He turned, starting to head out of the restroom but his steps faltered as he watched the bathroom slowly morph before him.

 

Brown spread across the floor in old blooms of decay, some stains darkening further to a deep rusty color.  The tile of the wall seemed to peel back in scrolls, giving way to scratched surfaces laced with mold and holes of rot; the strips of the wall fell to the ground in brittle fragments.  Dean jumped as one sink fell to the floor with a deafening crash, porcelain scattering in huge chunks that quickly faded to a dull off-white, thin brown cracks spreading out in spiderwebs across its surface.

 

Spinning around on his heels as he went, keeping his eyes on the growing rot spreading across the walls, Dean managed to make his feet carry him out of the bathroom.  The station’s office was no different; chairs were tipped over and broken, the pleather seats cracked and bleeding stuffing, the walls were molded and covered in darkened stains of questionable origin.  Dean swallowed nervously and his pace sped up as he left the building. 

 

Except, outside was suddenly very different.  It was so much darker; there was hardly any light at all and he was sorely wishing he had grabbed a flashlight before leaving the Impala.  Sam always kept one of those little keychain LEDs in his pocket and damn if that wasn’t useful after all.

 

Dean pressed himself up against the concrete wall of the station, aligning his body with the sidewalk, just as the very last of the siren faded away.  It was like midnight of a new moon, he couldn’t see anything at all.  He dug hastily through his pockets, knowing he had a lighter somewhere.

 

Finding it, he flicked it open and held it up against the wall.  It didn’t offer much against the sudden darkness, but it was comforting nonetheless.  _Better than being blind_ , Dean told himself.  The darkness had become absolute.  It ate at what little illumination his lighter offered, making the halo of its light shrink into nothing more than a puddle around him. 

 

He kept walking though, fingers tracing the side of the building.  He had to find Sam.  His brother was somewhere in this god forsaken town and Dean was going to find him and get them both the hell out of there.

 

He heard a loud moaning in the distance, somewhere nearby but not terribly close.  It made Dean slow his steps down the sidewalk.  He pulled his gun, pulling the safety off but keeping his finger off the trigger just in case: he didn’t need to be shooting blindly.

 

Another low moan spooked him, making his steps stutter and his breath catch.  It was closer this time and he could have sworn there was more than one.  At the same time, the radio on his hip gave out a wrenching, jarring sound, static hissing over the line and crackling obscenely loud.  It made Dean jump and he reached down to lower the volume.  _The fuck….?_

 

Dean frowned further as his fingers grazed over chain-link fencing where he could distinctly remember there having been buildings before, little mom’n’pop shops.  He had turned away from Bauchman Avenue when he left the station, following the intersecting road further into the town. 

 

Holding his lighter higher up, Dean saw nothing more than a flat concrete slab behind the fencing.  There was an abandoned car, paint chipping with rust, and a few trash bins but little else. 

 

He gripped his colt tighter as he pushed at the fence’s gate, walking into the open area.  The radio’s static grew increasing louder, sputtering angrily and giving off an occasional grating, discordant whine.  He sighed in agitation, reaching down again to turn the nob all the way off. 

 

In the following silence, he could hear it – the shuffling of footsteps and the pathetic moans of the hurt and suffering.  He knew those sounds; not a normal kind of pain, like the soft yelp of a stubbed toe or even the choked cry from a bullet wound.  No, this… this was suffering, distilled to its very core and reanimated into living form. 

 

He didn’t need his lighter to see them as they shuffled out from the darkened edges of the empty area.  There was a muted glow within their limbs and it wasn’t until they were a few steps away that Dean’s lighter really illuminated the bits of them that were too dark to have seen otherwise. 

 

Their skin was blacked and crusted, backlit as if they were burning from the inside.  Their mouths were stretched in a long ‘oh’ of misery and their eyes were shriveled in their sockets, little pinpricks of the same fiery glow where their pupils would have been.  Some of them were missing limbs, others featuring a thick tacky layer of caked blood in addition to the husks of their skin, a few had been completely disemboweled, gaping cavities left behind where their intestines should have been.

 

And Dean could smell them, could smell _it_ – Hell.  He would remember that scent until the day he died.  It was indescribable, the scent of Hell.  How did one go about defining the way suffering could become a tangible, detectable scent, something that coated the back of your tongue and forced its way into every pore of your body? 

 

They cried out to him, arms reaching and begging for relief.  He knew that, too.  He remembered that desperate need for an _end_. 

 

He backpedaled, feet stumbling as he ran from the burnt bodies of the damned and out into the road.  He could see more along the street, their bodies softly illuminated from within.  Turning away, he dashed down the sidewalk, desperate to find a way out, to find a place to lay low, to find his brother—

 

Could he even find his brother?  Oh God, what if… what if Dean was actually dead?  What if he had actually died in the car wreck?  Now he was back _there_ – facing Hell and all its monstrosities.  He stumbled again as more moaning issued from an alley next to him. 

 

Dean started trying door knobs of every building he passed.  There weren’t many, though.  The shops seemed to have all disappeared when the darkness fell.  Now he came across more empty lots, full of the creatures and their broken cries.  How could they even make such dreadful sounds when their vocal cords had to have burnt to smithereens?  Hell didn’t need reasons, he reminded himself.

 

“God damn it!” He growled, trying a fifth door and having no luck.  “What the hell is with people in this town!?”  Couldn’t _someone_ have left their door unlocked? 

 

He turned down a thin alley between two buildings, just a walkway between the employee’s only doors and a place to keep their dumpsters. 

 

“Please, please, please,” he whispered under his breath as he jiggled the doors’ handles.  It was fruitless, though; both were jammed shut.  He smacked his fist hard against the door, grimacing as he shouted, “Oh come on!”

 

Another loud moan caught his attention and he quickly flicked his lighter closed, snuffing the flame.  He backed up slowly, keeping his feet smooth and silent on the damp pavement and worked his way into the small space behind a dumpster.  He was snug between it and the chain-link fence dividing the alleyway. 

 

Kneeling, his feet were firmly against the ground and ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble.  Dean just had to think for a moment.  He had to figure out what the hell was going on and how he could fix this and how in the world he would find Sam in all this mess.  His finger slipped onto the trigger of his colt as another desperate moan echoed down the alley.  

 

_Oh, go away… go away, please, go away…_

 

They would find him.  Dean knew this.  He knew it would happen.  They would find him and he would only be able to fire so many bullets before they overwhelmed him – there were so many out there, it was only a matter of time, really.  He would die.  Again.  Oh, shit, what if Sam was dead, too?  What if these gross malformations had cornered Sam like they cornered Dean? 

 

Dean’s throat tightened at the thought of Sam trying to fight off hordes of these things as their dusty fingers scraped over his skin and clawed at his body, crumbling as they did so and burning him in the process.  Dean’s mind filled with the image of Sam covered in flames, blood coating the ground beneath him as his skin sloughed off in melted clumps.  Oh God, his Sammy, in Hell and playing victim. 

 

Memory after memory filled Dean’s consciousness.  To hell with the creatures out there – let them find him.  He didn’t care.  All he could see were the souls he had pushed up on the rack, and the things that had been done to him while he was on it, and the horrors that kept him company through those long, long decades.  Across every thought, every image and sense memory, he could see Sam’s face twisted in pain and sorrow.  They both had suffered so much and yet they were still suffering… so let the creatures find them.  He wouldn’t even feel it.

 

A sudden, jarring noise filled his consciousness then, pulling his thoughts away from such nightmares.  It was that alarm again.  It grew in a deafening crescendo around him, filling his ears until he could feel his eardrums vibrating, he could _hear_ his eardrums vibrating.  Sounds distorted around him as he dropped the gun and clapped his hands over his ears in an effort to make it stop.  He could barely hear the shrieks of the creatures, crying louder and louder as the alarm continued to wail over and over again. 

 

Glancing around the edge of the dumpster, Dean watched with wide eyes as the creatures crumpled apart like the charred logs of a fire, pieces falling down onto the wet ground and disintegrating into a thick mush of mud and ash.  The darkness was slowly retreating, light filtering into the sky and bringing the hushed gray color back into Dean’s surroundings.  He realized then that the walls weren’t burnt or molded or decrepit anymore, simply old and dusty and maybe a bit cracked here and there.  Everything seemed so much more _normal_ now. 

 

It was disturbing how the world seemed so calm as the alarm slowly faded away again.  Dean stood, slipping his lighter back into his pocket but grabbing up his colt and keeping it in hand.  He kept its reassuring weight in his palm, safety off as before but his finger away from the trigger.  He eyed the piles of ash wearily, half expecting them to spring up and reassemble themselves. 

 

As he passed the mounds on his way out of the alley, Dean gave them a good hard kick, scattering the remains across the concrete.  He might have smirked, feeling just a bit vindicated.  He kept his back to the brick wall as he crept out of the alley, glancing one way and then the other down the sidewalk. 

 

Nothing out of the ordinary. 

 

Even the softly falling ash was back, coating the ground again.  Dean noticed that everything was already coated, just as if the ash had never ceased falling in the first place.  He could have sworn the alleyway had been nothing more than cracked concrete and wet puddles when he had run back there…

 

He slipped the colt back under his jacket, into the waistband of his jeans, and started backtracking.  Whenever he heard a hushed noise or halted sound, Dean would call out, asking who was there, if it was Sam.  There was never any reply and it made Dean’s heart sink. 

 

Maybe Sam had gone back to the Impala?  _Or maybe those things really did…_ No, he couldn’t think like that.  Not now.  He had to find his brother. 

 

As Dean walked the length of the road, he became aware of a rhythmic sound off to his left somewhere.  It wasn’t something organic, it was more like… like music. 

 

Giving a curious glance around his surroundings, Dean crossed the road and followed the sidewalk until it gave way to another street.  It was thinner, lined with more little homerun businesses.  Glancing up, Dean made note of the street sign: _Wilson Street_.

 

The music grew louder as he followed it down the sidewalk, and Dean was surprised to find he recognized the tune.  He smiled despite himself as he jogged up to a café, door hanging ajar as a jukebox spouted tinny lyrics into the building and out into the street:  _I fell into a burning ring of fire. I went down, down, down and the flames…._

 

“Sam!”

 

Dean all but threw the scattered chairs and tables out of his way as he rushed through the café, having spotted the prone form of his brother in the back near a booth. 

 

“Sam! Hey, Sam.” He dropped to his knees and shook his brother’s shoulders.  He was breathing.  Oh, he was breathing!  A weight lifted off Dean’s chest as he watched Sam’s ribs expand with every breath.  “Wake up!  Sam!”

 

Another shake had Sam’s eyes flying open and he bolted up right, lashing out and yelling in panic.  Dean fell back, feet pushing him away from his brother’s violence. 

 

“Dude!” Dean shouted over Sam, “Dude! It’s me!”

 

Sam paused.  He had turned over on his hands and knees, fingers ghosting over the ground in search of something.  Glancing up, though, Sam met Dean’s gaze and the change in demeanor was physically evident.  His whole body sagged and his eyes grew dark; he looked so drained.

 

Dean crawled over to his brother and embraced him quickly.  Pulling him back, at arm’s length, Dean glanced over Sam’s frame.  “You okay….?  Jeez, what happened?”  He winced as he noticed all the cuts and scrapes along Sam’s neck and shoulders.  He yelped in surprise when he found blood soaking the cuff of Sam’s flannel. 

 

“Dean—God, Dean you wouldn’t believe.”  His breath came out in thin gasps as he shook his head.

 

“What happened, Sam?” Dean growled through gritted teeth.

 

Sam winced as Dean took hold of his injured hand.  The soft webbing between his thumb and forefinger had a deep slice in it, splitting the tissue apart.  The wound had already started to clot but every movement of Sam’s fingers had it breaking apart just a little and seeping blood along his hand.  A red stain trailed down his wrist and soaked the cuff of his shirt. 

 

Letting go of Sam’s hand, Dean stood up, hoping to find a first aid kit in the back of the café somewhere. 

 

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Sam was still seated on the ground, kneeling with his injured hand cradled in his lap.  He was shaking – Dean could see it even from behind the counter. 

 

“Sam,” he called, voice strong and sure despite how shaken up he was.  “Come on, man.  I need you with me.”  He walked back over and helped Sam up from the floor, guiding him to one of the barstools next to the counter.  “Tell me what happened.”

 

Sam’s eyes were elsewhere, gazing into some middle ground between him and the floor.  Assured that his little brother wasn’t about to go toppling off the stool, though, Dean made his way back behind the counter again and started opening cupboards and checking drawers. 

 

“There was… Dean, I swear I saw Jess.  I _saw_ her.  But…” Sam took a shuddery breath, running a hand over his face, and Dean frowned in sympathy.  “I don’t know, man.  I followed her – at least, I think I did.  I mean, it couldn’t have been her, right?” He chuckled without any humor at all.

 

Straightening up from behind the counter, Dean nodded.  “Yeah.  She’s… I’m sorry, Sammy.”  He took the seat next to Sam's.  Having found a small kit underneath the cash register, he laid it out on the counter and began sorting through gauzing and old antiseptic that had to be past its expiration date.  “Here,” he murmured, reaching out for Sam’s hand.

 

Sam complied without a hint of conscious thought, still caught up in the shock of whatever it was he had witnessed.  Dean wiped away what blood he could and dressed the serious scratches.  The cut in Sam’s hand was deep enough to warrant stitches once they got back to the car, but Dean thought it best to leave it be – Sam would likely just tear them open anyway with all his movement.  Instead, Dean used what little alcohol there was left in the kit and then slapped some sterile gauze over it, taping it down. 

 

Finished, he let Sam take his hand back.  “Now,” he said softly, gazing steadily at his little brother, “You gonna tell me what the hell happened to you?”

 

Sam shook his head, not negatively but more in a sense of bewilderment.  “There were… Okay, I followed Jess… and there were these—these things.  These creatures—“

 

Dean’s throat clenched, stomach fluttering anxiously.  Had Sam seen them too?

 

“They were disgusting,” continued Sam, face scrunching in disgust, “God they smelled… Dean, you wouldn’t believe how sickening these things were.  And we’ve both seen some pretty sick shit.”  He grinned, huffing a small laugh and attempting some humor.

 

Dean mimicked the smile, trying to lighten the mood with him.  It was difficult to do though, as Sam told his story about following the sidewalk and finding the corpse on the fence and then the kneeling creatures that groaned and clawed at him and how he had fought until the pain overwhelmed him.

 

“And then I woke up,” Sam finished, shrugging.

 

“Yeah,” huffed Dean, “Nearly took my nose off when you did.”

 

“Sorry about that.”  Sam smiled sheepishly, and Dean smiled back.

 

They were silent, listening to the last of _Ring of Fire_ give way to the opening of _Give My Love to Rose._  

 

“You don’t…” Sam bit at his lip, looking away from Dean’s curious glance.  “You don’t think she might be here?  You know?  Maybe… maybe something—“

 

“No, Sam,” whispered Dean, and god what he wouldn’t do to wipe that look off Sam’s face.

 

Sam nodded slowly and tapped a restless finger against the countertop. “Yeah,” he said, mouth twisting sardonically.  “Stupid thing to ask.”  Before Dean could think of what to say, Sam cleared his throat and changed topics.  “How about you?  Did you… see anything?”

 

“Yeah,” Dean said, nodding slowly but he didn’t want to talk about it.  He knew Sam needed to know; that he owed it to Sam to tell him what happened.  But he really didn’t want to remember the way those creatures had moaned, or the pain that rolled off them in tangible waves, or the scent of Hell that still, _still_ lingered in his nose. 

 

“—ean!”

 

“What?” Dean jerked, blinked at his brother.

 

Sam frowned, brow furrowed.  “You with me, man?”  He tried to laugh, but it was little more than a breath.

 

Dean nodded. “Yeah.  Yeah, I’m here.  Let’s get the hell out of this place, Sammy.”

 

Sam thankfully took the hint and let it go.  He stood up and nodded, following Dean out. 

 

 Johnny Cash’s deep timbre followed them all the way down Wilson Street; _God bless you for finding me this morning.  And don’t forget…_


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE**

 

“What the fuck?” Dean shouted, arms rising into the air in disbelief.  He turned, looking at his brother for some explanation but Sam had none to give; he was just as shocked as Dean.

 

They had made their way out of the café and down Bauchman Avenue without incident.  The town was as still and calm as ever, deathly pale beneath its blanket of ash.  When they finally reached the Impala, however, they were stunned to find that the road was… gone.

 

Where there had once been a long, even pavement, there was now a sheer precipice.  The road literally came to a halt, broken off with absolutely no evidence of a continuing piece on the other side of the chasm.  Not that they could see that far into the fog, anyway.

 

Dean leaned over, gazing down.  “For fuck’s sake,” he muttered under his breath. 

 

Sam however, was busy opening up the Impala and grabbing up whatever he could find; flashlights, his jacket, a half-empty water bottle, more ammo in the glove compartment.  Walking over to Dean, he exchanged the ammo for the keys.  He popped the trunk and started filling their duffels with every weapon available.

 

“Sam… What are you doing?”

 

Sam shrugged.  “We can’t leave this way.  So we’ve got to find another way out.”  He tossed Dean his sawed-off.  “Just figured we could… you know.”

 

Dean caught it and arched an eyebrow at him in disbelief.  “No, Sam, I don’t know.  What?  You want to go wandering _back_ into town?  Go looking for help?”  He scoffed, walking closer so he was standing next to Sam.  “Dude, I don’t know if you’ve noticed – but the place is _dead_.  As in there are no people—“

 

“I know that, Dean!” Sam shot his brother a nasty glare.  “What I mean is maybe we can find something useful?  Like… like another way out of town, or some kind of radio, anything!  I don’t know.”  He threw his hands up helplessly and zipped up their duffels. 

 

Dean reached under his jacket and produced a large radio transmitter, like the old walkie-talkies they used to play with when they were younger.  “You mean like this?”  Sam gave a soft nod of his chin, questioning.  “I picked it up in the police station.  It’s busted though.”  He turned the knob at the top of the radio and a low, hissing white noise issued forth.  “Huh…”

 

Sam glanced up at Dean, raising his eyebrows.  _What?_

 

Dean shrugged.  “It was… well, earlier when the whole place went to hell?  It went all wonky, screeching at me.  And the static man – was freaking _loud_.  I thought it broke.”

 

“Huh.” Sam stared at the softly hissing radio for a while, mulling over that information, before pulling a nonplussed expression and turning back to the trunk and giving a thorough once-over.  “Maybe you were near something?  Like a transponder or whatever.”

 

“Dude, you think there’s electricity?”

 

Sam titled his head in concession.

 

Hefting his shotgun, Dean grabbed up his duffel.  “So… we go in search of a roundabout?”

 

“Basically.”

 

“Awesome…. How’s your hand?”

 

Sam grunted a non-response.

 

“Oookay then.  Let’s get this show on the road.”

 

_____________

 

The jukebox was no longer playing when they retraced their steps back to the café.  Dean had been wary of going back there, but Sam insisted.  He had forgotten to grab his knife before they had left. 

 

“I remember having it with me, Dean.  I… When I ran out of bullets, I just went for as many as I could with it,” Sam had said as they were making their way back down Bauchman Avenue.

 

Dean had nodded.  “Alright, alright.   Let’s go find your damn knife.”

 

And sure enough, it was lying right beneath the booth where Sam had first woken up.  He smiled softly as he picked it up and found a dishrag behind the counter to wipe the blood off – no way did he want any more of that crap on his pants. 

 

Up until then, the radio had been filled with such a quiet white noise that they hadn’t thought to turn it back off when Dean clipped it to his duffel.  As Sam was walking back around the counter, he was startled by the sudden jarring screech that filled his ears.  Dean twisted, grabbing at the radio as it continued to sputter and keen.

 

“See?” He barked at Sam, holding it up.

 

Sam nodded.  He had to raise his voice because the noise was getting progressively louder and much more intense. “Yeah.  But wh—“

 

A great crash had both brothers ducking as something came flying into the lengthy front window.  Shards flew everywhere, clinking as they skid across surfaces, and perched in their wake was a giant… thing.  Its wings filled the length of the window it had just ruined, and its face was a twisted deformity.  Sam barely had time to study it before Dean was shooting at it, the boom of his shotgun ringing loudly in the confined space. 

 

Two shots and the thing retreated, rasping its displeasure as it quickly flew away.  One more shot caught it in its fleshy wing and it rasped louder still, but managed to continue its retreat.

 

Both of them filled the following silence with their breath, panting from the adrenaline rush.

 

Sam glanced over at Dean and, after a few controlled gasps, asked, “What the hell?”

 

Shaking his head, Dean just reloaded his gun.  “I don’t know, but I’m not waiting for it to come back.”  He cocked his gun with a loud _ka-chek_ and started toward the exit.

 

Behind him, Sam had noticed a bulletin board with some notices tacked up.  One in particular caught his attention.  “Hold on,” he muttered, walking up to it and pulling the sheet off.  He heard Dean gripe behind him.  It was a flyer for some town historical event, but the location was the Town Center; _just across the road from the Welcome Center down Simmons Street_ , it said. 

 

“Hey, Dean,” mumbled Sam, distracted as he reread the paper.  “Where’s Simmons Street?”

 

\-----------

 

“I still don’t get why we’re bothering.  We _should_ be looking for a road out of here.”

 

“That’s precisely my point, Dean.  We need a map of the town and I’m willing to bet the _Welcome Center_ has one.”  _Duh_ , his tone said as he turned away from his petulant brother.

 

Dean grumbled all the way up the steps and through the (surprisingly unlocked) double-doors. 

 

Inside was a large, open lobby with a ceiling that reached all the way up to the roof.  It was dusty, each of their steps circled by a halo of gray.  There were metal grates pulled down over all the entranceways branching off from the lobby, but Sam wasn’t really concerned with that.  His attention was on the moldy rack of tourist pamphlets nestled next to what he presumed was once the front desk. 

 

He pulled one pamphlet at a time, grabbing ones that were for hotels or what seemed like main attractions in the hope they might have a map inside to illustrate the major roads.  Sam unfolded them to look at their contents, and then he folded them back up and returned them to their rightful places. 

 

Dean’s presence filled the space behind Sam.  “Why do you even bother putting them back all neat and pretty, Samantha?”

 

Sam was not going to dignify that statement with an answer.

 

“I mean, you could just drop them on the floor,” said Dean, scuffing his boot and kicking up a cloud of thick dust.  “Not like anyone’s around to care.”

 

“Here,” Sam said, glad for the opportunity to steer his brother away from that train of thought.  “Found one.”  He smiled and held up the fold-out map. 

 

It spanned the whole of the backside of the glossy paper, showing all of Central and Old Silent Hill.  It was surprisingly detailed.  Every major shop was marked and all the major buildings denoted with bold print; the police, Alchemilla Hospital, Riverside Motel, Annie’s Bar, Cedar Sanatorium—

 

“There’s a Sanatorium?”  Dean asked incredulously, trying to snatch the map away from Sam. 

 

He let Dean have it to see for himself that yes, indeed, Silent Hill had a Sanatorium.  Why they would have ever needed one…..

 

“Wait,” Dean said softly, “Isn’t there supposed to be a prison here, somewhere?”

 

“Yeah, but that map only covers so much.  I think there’s a southern area where it's located.”  Reaching out for one of the pamphlets he had just had, Sam unfolded it and pointed to the small map in a corner.  It was for the Silent Hill Historical Society.  “See?  The roads don’t match.  So I’m guessing there’s a whole other section of the town on the other side of the lake.” 

 

Dean nodded slowly with a little _huh,_ and handed the map back to Sam.

 

“Well, that’d be handy,” said Dean, heading toward the doors, “If we had a boat.”

 

A small quirk pulled at the corner of Sam’s lips. 

 

They took a moment to sit down on the top step in front of the Welcome Center and pour over the map.  All the streets were laid out in a grid formation with a handful of winding roads outside of the main part of town. 

 

Pointing toward the top of the map, Sam said, “Here.  We can keep following Simmons and hit Nathan Avenue again.”

 

“I’m making a giant U-turn,” grumbled Dean, standing up.  “Fantastic.”

 

Sam smiled softly as he folded up the map and tucked it into an outside pocket of his duffel. 

 

They began making their way back to the Impala, retracing the steps that were already starting to fade beneath the falling ash.  From behind them, they heard shuffling steps and then a broken moan.

 

“Really?” Dean said in a low hiss.  “In the daylight?”

 

Sam shrugged, mouth quirking to the side in a helpless slant, and pulled his gun from his waistband.

 

Out of the fog a small body slowly came forward, arms stretched out in supplication.  Its skin was charred and brittle, a bright orange glow backlighting the veins and nervous system hiding behind what little healthy skin there was left.  Its face formed a twisted visage of pain and suffering with its mouth hanging open desperately and its eyes shrunken into their sockets.

 

Dean cursed.  “Hate these things…”

 

Glancing at his brother curiously, Sam lifted his arms and set his sight. 

 

Then the smell hit them; the unearthly stench of sulfur and rot and decay and pain and burning… the stench of Hell.  Sam staggered back, lowering his gun.  It was horrible, the smell and the moaning.  Oh God, he could hear it in stereo, hammering into his ears so hard he couldn’t remember to breathe.   He could feel himself shaking, his knees weak and giving out on him.  The concrete stung as his hands slapped hard against it; his right hand ached from where the gun was digging into his palm and grinding against the bones.

 

He could hear something… a voice, someone’s voice, but it was so far away.  Closer to him were the horrors of _arms drenched so thoroughly in blood that they look like red glass as light reflects off them; the strangled scream of a soul as its spine is wrenched out of its body, cracking ribs and ripping skin and squelching fluids; the putrescent stench of blood and feces and bile sizzling on the heated floor; the raucous laughter echoing out of the bars of a cage as an archangel takes its time slicing off strip after delicate strip of a soul’s skin; that the soul was_ —

 

“Sam!” The voice jarred his mind, yanking him out of that wretched torment.  He was shaking violently and he had to turn away from the arms around him as bile forced its way out of his stomach.  When he spat the last thick and stringy remnant, the arms were back and pulling him up, rubbing soothingly. 

 

“Hey,” the voice was saying, “Hey, Sam.  Sam.  Look at me.”

 

He couldn’t look.  He couldn’t see beyond the brightly colored images filling his sight, the afterburn of flames too bright to look at – _but they make you look, they make you do it_.

 

“Sammy.” 

 

He blinked rapidly, finally recognizing the voice and looking up into the bright green eyes of his brother, _Dean_. 

 

Spit got caught in his throat as he tried to speak and he had to cough a few times before he could say, “Yeah.  Yeah, I’m good.”

 

With a sigh, the tension left Dean immediately.  “Gave me a scare there, man.  What the hell?”

 

Sam shook his head, both as an answer and an effort to rid himself of the ghostly images that still lingered at the edges of his consciousness.  Thankfully, Dean didn’t push the matter.  Hands grabbing hold of Sam’s underarms, Dean helped him get to his feet.  Standing made him feel a bit dizzy for a moment, but he nodded and forced a smile by way of thanking Dean for his help. 

 

It was then that Sam spotted the fallen body of the burnt creature, lying a few feet away in a puddle of blood.  The fiery light that had filled it before was gone; little more than a pile of soot now. 

 

“Yeah,” Dean said, resting his shotgun against his shoulder, “Took four shots to pull that thing down, and even then it was still wriggling.  I just, uh…” He made a stomping motion with his foot and Sam nodded – that was all the visual he needed. 

 

Sam whispered, “Let’s just get going.”

 

Dean nodded, dropping the cocky attitude and turning back toward their original path.  “Sure thing, Sam.”

 

\------------

((to be finished))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all I consecutively wrote. The next chapters are just bits and pieces, fragments of things that come to me and I want to write them down so I have them to reference later. They're usually pretty rough and not all together finished.... but they're here just for fun.


	4. Adam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I thought at some point the boys ought to encounter their half-brother....

“Sam, is that…”

 

But Sam wasn’t answering.  And Dean wasn’t really asking.  There was no mistaking the corpse strung up in front of them.  It was their half-brother… emphasis on was.

 

He was suspended from the ceiling, face-down, thick meat hooks wedged deep into the thick muscle of his shoulders and hips and calves.  Thinner lines and hooks held up his limbs, his head.  The most unsettling part, however, were the cable lines that ran up beneath him, to his chest, to hold the cavity of it open.  He was flayed, like a dissected frog on a lab table.  The flaps of his skin were pulled out and pinned to whatever meaty flesh was within range, and then anchored with a thick tether. 

 

Sam coughed, gag reflex making itself known.  Dean had to turn away and spit what he couldn’t keep down, bile building in response to the gruesome scene.

 

Below Adam lay a gurney, stretched out beneath him and running parallel to his body.  On that gurney… was everything.  Anything and everything that would have been inside him was now on the metal slab.  Blood had spattered everywhere, coagulating thickly along the seams of the floor, and Sam was even aware of some spots on the wall closest to him that must have caught part of the spray.

 

The organs were blackened with decomposition and rot.  The stomach was plump, probably filled with its own gases at this point.  Dean couldn’t look at it.  Nor could he focus on the middle space between the body and the gurney, as the long ropes of Adam’s intestines hadn’t quite made their slippery way out of him.  There were pieces that seemed to have been lacerated during the dissection and ended without reason.   A few other thicker ropes led straight up into his pelvic region.

 

Sam’s eyes followed the ropey pieces upward and he had to look away at the sight; Adam’s penis hung in the air, its skin pulled back in long strips exposing the meaty tissue beneath.  Further back, the skin of his scrotum was gone completely, leaving just the rotted mess of his testicles.  

 

Looking away from the mess of Adam’s body, the boys walked up closer to his head.  There were smaller hooks sunk into the skin of his neck, pulling it taut and keeping his head somewhat upward.  It was lifeless, facing downward, but his neck was forcing it to at least stay somewhat vertical. 

 

“God…” Sam whispered, and Dean gave a snort of derision.

 

 Adam’s hair, normally much lighter than either of the other two brothers, was matted thick and dark with blood – at least, what was left of it was.  There were large patches of nothing but bright pink skin, obviously raw and abused from having chunks ripped from his scalp. 

 

His nose was a bloodied mess, the thickened clay-brown mess caked on his upper lip.   As the boys moved closer, they could see the side of Adam that had been facing away from them and were appalled to find that side of his face had been ripped open.  A thick tear ran its way from the corner of his mouth all the way up to his ear.  The skin of his cheek was gone completely, bits of it having ripped away jaggedly and left the muscle and bone of his face, jaw, and ear exposed.  His tongue had swollen so far that it was pushing at the seams between his teeth.  The bulbous muscle had already formed a putrid, greenish tint to it. 

 

His eyes… the boys had avoided looking directly at them, but now they had nothing more to focus on.  Adam’s eyes were cavernous holes in his skull.  The skin of his eyelids and around his brow was ragged as well, showing obvious signs of abuse and violence.  Scratches marked up his forehead and nose, barely noticeable under the seemingly endless blanket of dried blood.  The sockets were dried up, shriveled from the air, and the color was just as wretched as the rest of him, nearly black from the old blood.  

 

“What’s--?” Dean started and, before Sam could warn him away, he leaned closer to look into the pockets.   He yelped in surprise, and then moaned as a fresh wave of nausea forced him to turn away and empty his stomach again. 

 

Maggots.  Thick beds of them, crawling and worming their way through the decomposing flesh of Adam’s skull cavity. 

 

Sam swallowed forcibly, willing his own disgust to stay down.  It was getting very difficult to breathe.  Burying his nose in his shoulder, Sam ducked under a cable and walked around the body.

 

Adam’s limbs bore the same lacerations as his face; some were deep, cutting chunks out and exposing deeper parts of the anatomy, while others were shallow and only meant for pain.   Sam winced in sympathy as he took in the mangled flesh of Adam’s back, the way the skin around the hooks was nearly black from decay and also crawling with maggots.  

 

One wrong step had Sam’s foot sliding away from him, caught in the syrup-thick puddle of blood that had pooled beneath the gurney.  With a broken cry he felt his knee give out and, in instinctual reaction, he let his hand fly out – grabbing hold of the side of the gurney.  The metal shook loudly; disturbed, it knocked into some of the cables, making Adam’s body rock grotesquely in mid-air, head lolling and privates swaying.   Thick, pasty liquid sloughed off the sides and onto the floor with sickening _splat_ s.

 

Sam heard Dean vomit again.

 

He nearly did himself when he realized where his feet were and especially where his hand was.  Looking down, Sam yelped and yanked his hand back, shaking it.  He’d only had his hand on the very edge but it was still covered in coagulated fluids and slimy little maggots.  He gagged loudly when he looked to find a string of tendon or _something_ caught on his pinky and a thick band of intestine on his thumb.

 

He turned his head away and flicked his hand, hoping to sling the repulsive dregs off.  It managed to remove the strings of tissue and most of the maggots, but the blood was too thick – he would be cleaning that out from under his fingernails for weeks.

 

“Jesus, Sam,” Dean said, voice rough and softened.  He looked about how he sounded; pale, shaky, and barely keeping himself from being ill again.  “Just gotta get your hands dirty, dontcha?  Every fucking time.  You are _so_ nasty.”

 

Sam frowned but said nothing in reply.  Looking back down at his hand, he noticed a gleam he hadn’t seen before.  

 

His hand was already foul enough, why bother being squeamish now? 

 

Reaching out, Sam pushed aside what he could only assume had been Adam’s liver, a few yards of intestines that were coiled around it as well, and brushed away some of the blood-bile-feces- _mess_ of a concoction that was breeding on the gurney’s surface.  Beneath everything, he found what the gleam belonged to; the flattened edge of a key.

 

Dean, through all of this, had kept up a steady supply of insults and disgusted comments about Sam’s sanity and sexuality.  He fell silent when he noticed Sam had actually _found_ something.

 

Sam huffed a sardonic laugh, glancing to his brother – who looked significantly paler – and plucked the key from the table top.  There was a tag attached to it with string, and it dripped lazily as Sam pulled it away from the liquid.  His lip curled in distaste as he pulled it closer for inspection.

 

“I think it’s to a hotel,” Sam said as he held it up to his flashlight, “Room 241… it’s got a pattern on it, but I can’t… I’m not sure.” 

 


	5. Cage

“Sam!” Dean shouted, hand on the door to keep it from closing, “Get in here!”

He stood frozen, however, staring wide-eyed at the elevator.  “D-Dean,” his voice was so soft, barely audible over the moans and growls behind him.  “I can’t.”

The monsters were closing in on them.

“Damn it, Sam,” he growled and reached out, yanking him in by the front of his shirt.  Hearing his brother crash against the grating, he slammed the door-closed button and then **down**.

With a loud clatter, the cart jerked into movement, falling downward in a slow progression.

Both men shuddered at the sound of the hounds crashing into the gate above them, growling and snarling down through the bars in their direction.  Dean wanted to feel cocky, wanted to shout something smart at the creatures, but he couldn’t really muster up the energy for it.  He was drained and tired and just wanted to get the hell out of Silent Hill.

It was quieter now, the sound of the monsters’ moans and howls fading away into the background to give way to the groan of mechanical contraptions and the rush of flames.  They were moving down a shaft of metal piping, through which they could see gears turning in large clockwork mechanisms, grates opening and closing, bellows feeding harsh fires. 

If it weren’t for the hellish décor, Dean might have said he felt safe…well, _safe-ish_. 

Looking over at his brother, he lost the feeling.  Sam was standing in the middle of the cart, looking as if he was physically unable to touch the edges.  His eyes were caught in a wide stare, frozen in panic, but not seeing anything in this reality.  Dean could see his brother physically shaking.

“Sam?”

No response.  His breathing was harsh, labored and quick.  They may have been running for their lives not two minutes ago, but Dean knew Sam couldn’t be so winded from that little _jog_. 

“Sam,” he said with more force, reaching out and pressing his hand to Sam’s shoulder.

His brother yelped, flinching away and yanking his baseball bat up as if to strike.  Finally pulling his eyes up to gaze at him, Sam stopped and lowered the bat back down to his side.  

It shocked Dean at how much pain and worry hid behind Sam’s wet eyes.

“Christ, Sammy.”

“I c-can’t,” he started but couldn’t finish.  Looking around, he waved his free hand around them vaguely, whispering, “It’s… it’s a cage.”  Glancing back at Dean, Sam’s gaze willed his brother to understand.

And he did.  Dean understood completely.  How many times had this placed fucked with the dark places left in his own past?

“Dude,” Dean began, but was unable to find the words. 

The cart jostled them again, snagging on some catch in the line, and Sam whimpered loudly when he had to reach out and grab at one of the bars to keep himself upright.  He let go of it as quickly as he could, as if it was scalding to the touch.

“It’s okay, Sam,” said Dean.  He reached out and took hold of Sam’s elbow, catching his gaze and holding tight. “It’s gonna be fine, okay?  We’ll get out of here real quick.”

Sam wasn’t stupid, he would see through the emptiness in Dean’s words.  Didn’t mean it wasn’t comforting, though. 


	6. Rescued

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This would've been the end of the piece.... Sam having been crucified or something similar (by monsters or cultists, wasn't entirely sold on one), and Dean finding/rescuing him.
> 
> I would probably change this though if I decided to pick it up again.... I don't like the idea of Sam constantly being the damsel to Dean's white knight..... but that's all just me thinking outloud.

“S-sam?” Dean gasped; oh God, don’t let him be too late. 

He made his way to the banister of the loft, where his brother’s makeshift-cross was propped up against it. They had crucified his brother… all in the name of their god, their faith. People were the real monsters. 

“It’s okay, Sammy. I gotcha.” 

He was so very, very thankful to see the rise and fall of his brother’s chest, no matter how frantic it may have been. His brother was still alive. Wounded but alive. 

And Sam was wounded. 

Dean swore as he reached over the railing to untie his brother, noticing only now that they had strung him up with barbed wire, parts of it rusty with disuse and age, other parts just stained with blood – it may not have even all been Sam’s. 

The plank that formed the smaller part of the cross was jagged and splintered, large pieces breaking off against Sam’s back. Sam’s skin was blistered and pink where he had been slowly lowered over the pit. Dean wanted to puke when he looked up at Sam’s face and realized his eyebrows were singed.   
And then there was the blood. Sam’s skin was a mottled mess of lacerations and bruises, deep gouges in his sides and precise slices across his limbs. They had carved their seals into his stomach, deep enough in some places that Dean wondered if Sam would even live to get out of the god-forsaken hellhole. Of course, he couldn’t think like that. 

“Sam? Sam, talk to me, man.”

His brother’s head was limp, chin lolling across his collarbone. Dean could see the ash and soot that had caked onto his skin, and he could see the dried tracks of where his tears had fallen. His hair was tangled and thick, matted with blood, hanging in dreadlocks around his ears. Maybe Dean would finally be able to talk Sam into cutting it all off now… doubtful. 

“Sam!” He tried again, reaching out to pat his brother’s face a few times. “Sam, wake up! I need you conscious!”

Sam startled a little when Dean smacked him, jerking awake and whimpering desperately as the sharp barbs cut deeper into his flesh. Fresh tears welled in his eyes as Sam bit at his chapped lip, tugging at the flaking scabs in an effort to distract himself. 

“Hey,” said Dean, reaching out to gently touch his brother’s cheek, angling his gaze, “Hey, Sam, it’s me. We gotta get you outta here, okay? Can you get your feet under you?”

Sam stared at Dean, eyes wide and wet and bright with pain. After a few tense moments, in which Dean was ever aware of the chaos mounting around them, Sam nodded. 

“Yeah,” he said, voice wrecked, “Yeah, I-I’m good. Get me off this thing, Dean.”

“You bet.”


	7. Forgotten bits & abandoned pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are bits and pieces that I wrote out when a thought hit me. They're sort of in chronological order of where they'd be in the story, had I written that far.

“Look,” Dean said, point to the side, “A bar. Someone's gotta be in there, right?” He grinned at Sam, waggling his eyebrows.  
  
Sam rolled his eyes. “No, Dean. Come on, we gotta find that guy.”  
  
“Just one drink,” insisted Dean, walking over to the front of the building. It was located on the corner of the intersection, door facing outward in greeting. However, as Dean walked up and tried to open it, the door shuddered: locked.  
  
“Too bad,” Sam deadpanned, obviously nonplussed. Turning to look down the two roads, he chose to move to their left and continued, shotgun at the ready.  
  
Dean grumbled but followed quickly behind.  


* * *

  
  
As the fog cleared further, they noticed the shape was actually a small trailer RV, the door of which was left wide open.  
  
Dean started to walk up to it, ready to look in, but the radio was hissing again.  
  
“Dean,” Sam murmured, “We should keep going.”  
  
“No, hang on... there's something on the couch in here.”  
  
“Dean,” Sam hissed, glancing around them and trying to make out the bleary shapes hidden in the mist.  
  
His brother paid him no mind, trouncing into the RV like he owned the place.  
  
A moan and a gargled hiss had Sam whirling to his right, trigger finger hesitating only long enough to process the malformed creature shuffling towards them. It was another of the faceless wrigglers, body twisted up inside its own skin, gaping wound in its chest, festering and black.  
  
He fired, catching it high in the chest, but it didn't go down. If anything, it just got agitated – physically shaking and growling louder, a wailing hiss behind its voice.  
  
“Damn it,” Sam grumbled, regretting having wasted the ammo. “Dean! Hurry up---Aggh!” Sam yelped as the creature vomited on him.  
  
The blackened ooze mostly missed Sam, but some managed to catch his shotgun and the majority of the forearm holding it. At first Sam just growled in disgust but then a burning pain seared through his arm, the fabric of his jacket melting and steaming as it burned away.  
  
“Shit!” Sam cried out, “Shit, shit, shit! Dean! Help!”  
  
His brother was there in an instant, swinging the lead pipe hard against the creature's skull before it could turn toward him and do what it had to Sam. He swung twice more, knocking it down and beating its skull into the concrete.  
  
Turning around, he saw his brother throw his jacket to the ground, wiping furiously at his arm. Dean closed the distance between them, yanking his water bottle from his duffel and motioning for Sam to hold out his arm. The water pouring over the wound steamed and Sam hissed through his teeth. His fingers clenched and gripped at the air.  
  
“Fuck, Dean...”  
  
“Yea, I know,” was all Dean could reply with. “Well, now we know to keep our distance, huh?” He smiled tersely.  
  
“Yea. Right,” Sam said, flexing his fingers and bending his elbow.  
  
Dean pushed his bottle back into his duffel and pulled out the map. “I know where we're going now,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.  
  
Sam took the bait. “Where?”  
  
“To get a drink.”  
  
  
“It's locked, Dean.”  
  
“Yea, well, there's got to be a backdoor, right?”  
  
Sam sighed, shrugging. “For all we know, it's actually on the back side of the building.” He hefted his duffel further up his shoulder, the weight of it starting to get to him. They had been running circles around themselves for nearly an hour now. Sam was starting to worry that their supplies would run out...  
  
“We can look, Nancy Negative.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
Sure enough, there was a second door on the side of the building. Better yet, it was unlocked. How convenient, Sam thought, anxiety twisting his insides.  
  
There was nothing inside though and, from what they could tell, the room was little more than storage space. There was another door, supposedly leading into the bar, but the doorknob had been knocked clean off. Sam wasn't sure they could have picked it, with the shape it was in.  
  
“Well, that's creepy,” Dean muttered, staring at one of the newspapered windows.  
  
“Everything about this place is creepy.”  
  
“Yeah,” Dean conceded, titling his head. He pointed at the sloppy graffiti on the window, “But that is really creepy.”  
  
Looking at the wall, brow furrowed, Sam read the words:  
  
 **There was a HOLE here. It's gone now.**  
  
“Agreed,” Sam said, voice soft, “Very creepy.” Turning away, he shined his flashlight into the corner of the room, ghosting over the dusty floor and along the singular countertop... wait, a second. “Hey, look at this.”  
  
Dean turned and followed him to the counter. Coming up next to his brother, his eyes narrowed on the piece of paper. It was a map – with a whole bunch of writing on it. “What the...?” He dug through his duffel, pulling out their own copy of the map, and laid it out on the counter. “You got a pen?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam said, voice low and distracted. As he riffled through a pocket, he said, “Dean, what's that mark? There. At the end of Martin Street?”  
  
Dean shrugged. “No idea. But I bet James went looking there.”  
  
“If this isn't James' map,” said Sam, handing over a Sharpie.  
  
Taking the marker, Dean started copying over the marks and notes, while Sam held the flashlight for him.

“Nah,” he said around the cap of the pen, “Look at how old this is. It's got dust on it.”  
  
“Yeah, good point.”

 

* * *

 

((This piece here is later in the story... I wrote it while trying to reconciled how the boys would confront Pyramid Head, if at all.  I've since decided they probably won't meet PH, seeing as that goes against SH2 canon.... but there could always be /Dean's/ version of a PH...))  
  
  
There was a sharp, halting cry north of them. A woman in distress.  
  
Without a word, both boys took off running in that direction, Sam holding his flashlight high and Dean ready to swing at anything that moved. The hallway was long, though, and dark; the flashlight barely illuminated more than two feet in front of them.  
  
The radio started to hiss.  
  
Slowing down, both boys took a defensive stance as they walked, hurriedly, down the corridor.  
  
“What?” Sam mumbled, seeing a strange pattern morph from the darkness. A series of jagged metal pipes had been speared into the floor, crisscrossing one another in a strange imitation of a grate. Beyond that, however... that made Sam's stomach curl.  
  
The dim light of the flashlight caught a harsh glimmer of red, deep and ruddy. It was... it was a giant, metal contraption. Below the strange creation was the body of a man, thick and muscled, wearing a butcher's apron. The... man? Creature? It held no weapon, nor did he say anything or move when the boys approached. The static of the radio, however, grew increasingly violent.  
  
“Jesus,” sighed Dean, stepping only a few feet shy of the barricade between them. He squinted at the humanoid figure. “Sam,” he whispered, loud enough to be heard over the radio, “I... This...” He stood back, running a hand over his mouth and looking rather at a loss for words.  
  
Sam nodded. “That body is dead, Dean. There's... there's no way.”  
  
The skin was white, drained of any blood. Any veins that were visible, cording around the muscle in the creature's arms, were purple or a sickly green; there were cuts and jagged wounds, haphazardly decorating its skin, necrotic with age. It made bile rise in Dean's throat.  
  
Never one to let his apprehension show, Dean stepped back up to the grate, pressing his face close to the bars.  
  
“What the fuck is that on your head?” Dean yelled across the distance. He shook a hand next to his own head, saying, “Aliens aren't gonna get you, man. You can take the tinfoil off.”  
  
It kept staring at them. Completely motionless.  
  
Sam gripped a handful of Dean's jacket, never taking his eyes off the creature. “Dean,” he said softly, only for their ears, “Can we not taunt the scary butcher man?”

* * *

 


End file.
